Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows’ attorney.

  • capital
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    fedilink
    411 months ago

    You said to use it for good.

    Telling someone about jury nullification doesn’t mean they’ll use it for good.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      411 months ago

      Tell them how to use it for good. The law skews towards evil by the nature of what the law exists to do and the historic inequity inherent in it’s application. If jury nullification was used at random it would be used for good more often than not. In the past it was used both in the south to legitimize lynching and in the north to ignore fugitive slave laws (“Some commonly cited historical examples of jury nullification involve jurors refusing to convict persons accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting runaway slaves or being fugitive slaves themselves, and refusal of American colonial juries to convict a defendant under English law.” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#:~:text=Some commonly cited historical examples,a defendant under English law.)

      If you talk about it’s history, then you absolutely end up talking about how to use it to nullify illegitimate laws. I said to tell people how to use it for good, not “ensure that every human who knows about this only uses it for good.” I didn’t say the later because that would be an absurd thing to day that’s just obviously impossible to achieve.